January 13–February 06 . 2011
Darlene Charneco
Self-Assembling MP
Darlene Charneco
Self-Assembling MP
For virtual reality to fulfill its highest potential, we must reinvent the sacred spaces where we collaborate with reality in order to transform it and ourselves. —Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre, 1991
Darlene Charneco has an inspired way of looking at life’s possibilities. Like others who spend time thinking about such things, Charneco considers ‘what is’ and imagines ‘what could be,’ but not solely within personal or political spheres. She posits that in our waking and dreaming lives, online and off, we are connecting the dots between us as never before. It may be possible, she believes, that our overlapping, shared experiences of the world will enable us to achieve no less than a truly empathetic civilization. Charneco is particularly interested in how evolving tools of technology can improve our actual and virtual worlds. This line of inquiry stemmed from a dream she had on March 25th, 1999, one that has inspired and guided her artistic explorations ever since. She dreamed of paging through a magazine and reading a horoscope that unfurled to provide specific, personal instructions for realizing a grand social, business, and philanthropic venture. The dream provided precise three-dimensional diagrams, beautiful and mysterious holograms, and though she did not own a computer at the time, Charneco later recognized these as web portals and avatars. The dream urged her to reread her science texts and to do her part in helping this interactive universe evolve into a kind of benevolent and symbiotic organism—“a new collaborative movement for a better world in which the masses would be inspired to participate.” Over the ensuing decade, Charneco’s dream has led her in many research directions, all of which have informed her mixed media artworks. She has explored gaming, social networks, and network theory. She has delved into computerbased realms. This includes an experimental community project called Better World Island within the 3D virtual world of Second Life, an exploration of interactive microphilanthropy and design collaboration. Through the lens of biology she has observed the evolution of the Internet and online communities and the development of a “global brain.” All is fertile material for a body of work comprised of layered resin models and maps offering God’s-eye views of the current cyberspace landscape, which Charneco calls Cyburbia. This is a place where the real estate business is booming, a territory of endless developments lined with dream homes. She envisions it as a shared playground where “projected human desires mingle, connect, overlap, clash, merge, vanish, replicate, or die off.” She writes, “[Cyburbia] is a primordial soup of immersive spaces combining and competing with one another. In the
next few years we may watch the microcosms of virtual worlds as we would Petri dish experiments, learning much about ourselves in the process.” Inspired by the concepts of entanglement and mutualism, she began to ponder the various possibilities of a navigable collective memory, imagining shared experience as a pathway to empathy and giving. It is this last path of inquiry that is the focus of Charneco’s new show at CHRISTINA RAY, “The Self-Assembling MemoryPalace.” She has combined terminology from two disciplines, science and architecture, to describe artworks that look like chunky building blocks of a utopian whole. Each is a beautiful realm with undulating roads and waterways and colorful, shiny-new architecture. It is possible to think of these as pieces of a planned community, each part of a three-dimensional prospectus for a community where an inner logic prevails. Charneco’s designs are inspired by a physical occurrence known as self-assembly, wherein components (nanoscopic or macroscopic) are seen to spontaneously organize themselves into an ordered pattern. The process creates a structure of a higher order than the isolated components from which they are formed. Moreover, the structures seem to build themselves in order to serve a purpose or perform a task. Charneco sees this process at work in the ongoing evolution of the World Wide Web. She envisions the minds of millions of Web users, bursting with uploaded images and text that are processed, reshaped, and stored in a giant communal memory bank; here multitudinous connections coalesce into a shared space that is fluid and navigable. The Memory Palace, often referred to as the Method of Loci, is an ancient term found in several classical texts. It refers to a technique of memory recall used by orators and memorization masters. Anyone can construct a mental memory palace by storing blocks of information in sequentially arranged rooms, hallways, ballrooms, and other spaces; from this process the cached information can be recalled in full. Researchers today have found that spatial metaphors are a surprisingly effective means of organizing and retaining memories. Our mental processes are optimized when tied to three-dimensional imagery. The largest piece in “Self-Assembling MemoryPalace” is “Bismuth City” (48 x 48”), part of a series of hammered prayer pieces that Charneco has been creating since 1994. These wall pieces are three-dimensional land- and cityscapes built of nails. Engaged in the laborious process of building up rows upon rows of undulating geography, Charneco allows the hammering to take her into a near-meditative state. Here she feels the power of ritual common to all cultures and religions. “When I first began ‘writing’ with nails in my artwork, I wanted to create a language that could be felt as well as seen,” Charneco has written. “Created in the spirit of the European monastic scribe illuminating a manuscript or a Tibetan monk creating a sand mandala, these works encompass both the pursuit of an evolved self and hopes for a more enlightened humanity. They are objects of tangible human optimism hammered out in a personal code of nails.” In “Bismuth City” the nailweave undulates in and out, simulating the growth of a Self-Assembling MemoryPalace. To Charneco, this echoes the growth of a Bis-
muth Crystal, a beautiful laboratory-grown mineral with a distinctive “hoppered” shape. Unequal levels of electrical attraction increase the growth rate of the crystal’s exterior walls, leaving the interior “rooms” hollow. When this concept is applied to a memory palace, it allows for the endless addition of empty chambers ready to be filled with data nuggets. Several other memory palaces in the show include simple house and castle components, toy parts seemingly linked in eight-bit video-game style. The concept of the Self-Assembling MemoryPalace helps Charneco visualize an increasingly necessary tool for sorting and ordering the abundance of digital information that confronts us daily. A memory palace echoes the function of a dreaming mind, consolidating and processing memories so as to strengthen the connections between knowledge and experience. “As we become more and more aware of our interconnectedness,” Charneco says, “there is both hope and responsibility in the power of the individual to affect change. With the gradual proliferation of tools to view and simulate cumulative effects of our individual behaviors, one of our largest challenges will be to learn to live with the Big Picture in our daily lives…and to use this knowledge to better inform the choices with which we create our joined future.” Katharine Harmon Author, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography
Memory Palace, 2004, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2”
Memory Palace White, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Dharma Dreampalace, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Dreampalace Memory Holder, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2� Night Perfume Mystery, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Our Little Eden, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2� Miami Automimicry (Eyespots), 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Above image and cover: Immense Journey (Symbiosis), 2010, mixed media on panel, 24� diameter
Adventure Mapping, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Self-Assembling Memory Portal, 2010, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2�
Installation View: ArtSites: Art + Architecture, Long Island, New York, 2007
About Darlene Charneco Darlene Charneco’s resin-layered mappings explore social networks and the gradual reorganization of information on the web into shareable and intuitively navigable 3D spaces. She is inspired by the blurring boundaries between dream and waking activities, natural and urban environments, the implications of our rapidly increasing interconnectivity and the evolution of an accessible collective memory. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US at venues including the Katonah Museum, the Hunterdon Museum, The Islip Art Museum and Parrish Art Museum. Her work is featured in the recent book ‘The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography’ by Katherine Harmon 2009. Charneco lives and works on the east end of Long Island. CHRISTINA RAY is an innovative gallery and creative catalyst in New York whose mission, grounded by the concept of psychogeography, is to discover and present the most important contemporary artwork exploring the relationship between people and places.
Cherry Blossom Worlds, 2006, mixed media on panel, 5.5 x 5.5 x 2”
30 Grand Street . Ground Floor . New York, NY 10013 between Thompson St./6th Ave . subway A/C/E to Canal hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12-6pm . phone: 212.334.0204 web: christinaray.com . email: info@christinaray.com